Police in the Canary Islands have chalked up a major success in the fight against organised crime with the arrest of a network behind fraudulent property sales totalling millions of euros.
A total of 19 members of the gang were arrested in swoops in Tenerife and two of the ringleaders remanded in prison pending further investigations and a likely trial.
According to police, the gang identified houses and apartments belonging to old, vulnerable or even deceased persons and moved into the properties, changing the locks and then forging ownership papers which they then used to register the properties in their names and then sell them to unsuspecting buyers, who purchased the homes in good faith.
The gang is alleged to have obtained almost 3 million euros from the fraudulent sales, which included one luxury villa in Santa Cruz which they acquired ownership of by using the name of a person who died 40 years ago.
The arrests followed painstaking investigation by the police’s serious crime unit, which said the gang had gone to great lengths to cover its tracks and make it difficult to follow the trail of their actions but abundant documentary evidence of their criminal activities had been located in raids carried out simultaneously in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Laguna, Arico, Granadilla de Abona and Güimar. Officers also seized mobile phones, computers and 40 kilos of drugs in the swoops. The 19 gang members face a range of charges from fraud and document forgery to money laundering.
